#oneaday Day 601: January progress

So, January has been coming to a close. How are things going?

Not all that bad, really. The only thing I've been lax on for Things I Wanted to Achieve In January is piano practice. I've been so tired and achey of an evening that I just want to zombie out, and sitting with proper posture at the piano has been the last thing on my mind. I am starting to feel a bit better, though, particularly with good progress in other regards, so I will try reintroducing that to my "routine" shortly, along with some more exercise.

The most notable progress so far has been on weight loss. Since I started sticking properly to the calorie plan, I've lost 10 pounds. This is good! Of course, there is still a lot more to go, but it's a good start, and proof that what I'm doing is working.

What's particularly good about what I'm doing is that I feel like I've found a plan that offers a good balance between me not feeling like I'm starving myself — which can end up with me just wanting to binge, which is counterproductive — and still allowing the weight to come off. I know, realistically speaking, that I can't expect 10 pounds to fall off every two weeks — the first weeks following a new plan are always the "easiest" for some reason — but as long as the general trend skews downwards over the medium to long term, I will be satisfied.

And the nice thing is that I'm by no means depriving myself of Nice Things. I had some digestive biscuits yesterday! I had some Cheez-Its at lunchtime! I might have a bacon sandwich for breakfast tomorrow! The important thing, as is probably obvious to the vast majority of people who are not My Size, is moderation. Eating a measured, weighed-out portion of Cheez-Its and taking the calories into account? Fine. Getting a whole big bag of Cheez-Its and eating all of them in a single sitting because I have no self-control in that scenario? Not fine.

It's easy to feel like a supposed "portion" of something is stingy, but in actual fact it can be quite surprising how satisfying a "portion" of something can be. To return to the Cheez-Its, a "portion" is 30g, which is actually quite a generous helping of them, and certainly not depressingly unsatisfying. The only thing I've found myself exceeding the "recommended" portion size on is sultana bran cereal; 30g of that really is stingy, and 40g is much more satisfying for not that many more calories, so that's where I've settled on that.

Of course, I've been here before, with Things Going Well for a couple of weeks and then just falling off at some point afterwards, usually with the flimsy justification of depression, tiredness, illness, frustration or any manner of other things. But right now I'm feeling pretty good about how things are going, and the possibility of being to maintain this over the longer term. So let's hope I can actually stick to that and see where things go from here.

I know I can do this. I've done it before. And it will make my life so much better if I can accomplish it again. So I will keep at it.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 507: Things that haven't got better

I wasn't sure what to write about today. I'm still not entirely sure what to write about, and as I do at such times, I found myself hitting the "Random Post" button a few times on this site to look at things I've written about before. And I was mildly dismayed to discover that a number of things that I find frustrating about life in 2025 — both in a personal sense and in a broader, societal or cultural sense — have been An Issue for a lot longer than I'd realised.

For example, I've written a few times recently about how "analysis paralysis" can easily descend when you're preparing to enjoy some entertainment for the evening. I also wrote about this back in 2013 — though I do feel like it has only continued to get worse in the age of streaming, Game Pass and all that stuff, not that I subscribe to any of those things.

I also wrote about how frustrating I found websites' "guide content" used as clickbait back in 2016, though this was less of a surprise, since I was forced into the production of SEO-juicing crap like that when I was laid off from USgamer. That has definitely gotten worse — and the specific issue I complained about in that post, which was websites posting a "landing page" for a guide that didn't actually exist, is still a thing that happens.

I just don't feel like the world is significantly better in 2025 than it was in 2013 or 2016! In many ways, it's significantly worse! We reached something of a tipping point with tech in particular where new innovations stopped being about making life better for everyone, and instead became about cynically making money for people who really don't need any more money. Such is the way of capitalism, of course, but it feels like that side of things has been especially obnoxious over the course of the last 5 years or so.

Then, of course, there's the fact that intolerance of marginalised groups is way back up compared to what it was ten years ago. There was absolutely still work to be done back then, of course, but the mid-20-teens had shown a marked amount of progress in generally accepted progressive attitudes. Much of that progress feels like it has been spitefully torn up in the last year or so in particular — unsurprisingly, coinciding with the inauguration of the world's most embarrassing authoritarian.

But hey. At least you can use AI to generate revenge porn of people you don't like, completely without their consent, and then share it with the world, again, completely without the subject's consent. So that's nice!

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#oneaday Day 701: Deadline

First up, a shoutout to Mados' excellent post on Telephobia, which makes use of one of my cartoons as well as quoting me, making me look wittier than I remember being about that particular affliction. Thanks, Mados.

Now, onto today's discussion

At what age are you supposed to have "it" all figured out? And by that I mean be doing what you're "supposed" to be doing, looking toward the future rather than dealing with the immediate present and being in a position to buy super-expensive things like cars and houses. Is 30 a reasonable deadline? Because if so, I don't think I'm anywhere near.

Since leaving university, I've had a number of different jobs. I've been a teacher in both primary and secondary education. I've been a freelance writer. I've been a shop-floor salesperson. I've been an in-store personal tech trainer. I've been a regular long-term contractor for a video games website. This isn't even considering jobs I had while at university, which included mopping up sick, collecting glasses and making a badass prawn cocktail.

The thing, though, is that I don't feel like I've made a lot of "progress" along the way. The only position in which I've had what you might describe as a "promotion" was when I went from being a shop-floor sales person to an in-store personal tech trainer, and that was more a change of role (or, more specifically, the formalisation of something I was already doing anyway) than a "promotion" per se. That particular job was the one I held the longest, staying there for around about two and a half years. Other jobs I've move on from in a year or less, leaving no time to be promoted. And others still I've left simply because there wasn't a job there for me any more — this happened with my first teaching post thanks to the school being half a million quid in the red, and more recently with the sudden and sad closure of GamePro.

It's worrying me a bit, to be honest. I know plenty of people who found themselves jobs after university and have been steadily working their way up through the ranks ever since. They seem quite happy with what they're doing, even though it's not in the slightest bit related to their degree, and generally just seem to be far more "sorted" than I feel.

Now, granted, I don't live inside their heads and thus can't say for sure what they think about their whole situation. It's entirely possible, of course, that they feel that the job they've been making such good progress in is actually a dead end, and long to break free and do something they really want to do.

Thing is, the whole "follow your dreams" thing is sort of what I've been doing, only the trouble with dreams is they have a habit of not living up to what you expect — largely because, being dreams, you tend to ascribe somewhat unrealistic expectations to them. And after the fact you're just left feeling slightly bewildered and disillusioned by the whole experience.

I don't have a solution for myself. From January, I have some work that I'll enjoy, though I'll need more to be able to live comfortably. I do also have an interview for something lined up in January, too, which would, to be honest, solve a lot of problems if I do manage to get, even if it's arguably something of a step backwards in terms of salary and whatnot.

Fingers crossed, I guess. And if not… err, is anyone reading this looking for someone to write the news on their website? And pay?

#oneaday, Day 48: RUN.

It's been a while since I talked about my exercise-related endeavours, so I figured why the hell not now? (You can, of course, follow my exercise-related Tumblr if you're that way inclined.)

Basically, it's going quite well. I've done two "long runs" of 8.25km now, which suggests that by the time May and the 10K I've signed up for comes around, I'll be ready to run that distance. It may be slowly and involve a lot of guttural grunting (particularly on hilly bits) but I should be able to at least do it. And why 8.25km? Well, convenience. I set out from my house in one direction, run down a country lane that seems to go on forever (2 miles), turn down a road and do a big loop around on a slightly less country laney country lane that also seems to go on forever before making one last turn onto another, marginally more country laney than the second country lane but less country laney than the first country lane country lane and ending up coming up the street my house is on from the other end. It shouldn't be too much difficulty to extend the route to 10K, but at the moment I'm pretty knackered by the time I get to this distance, so it'll be a case of extending it a bit at a time.

I may still be pretty slow, but I'm certainly pleased with my progress since I started towards the end of last year. Setting up some form of "structure" and quasi-reward mechanic has helped enormously. To begin with, this was the Couch 2 5K programme, that got me off my ass and moving in the first place. In the first week of that, I was exhausted by the time I'd been running for just a minute but gradually built up to being able to run for 30 minutes at a time. I started the Bridge 2 10K programme but the holiday period disrupted that somewhat. Rather than go back to that, I've simply been doing three runs a week—one pace-setting one of 5K or so, one "long" one (8.25K at the minute, that will eventually become 10K) and one interval training session (currently three sets of four lots of run fast 1 minute, run moderately 1 minute, repeat with 2 minutes of walking in between each set). I've been using the RunKeeper app on my phone to track my progress, and it's always pretty cool to see yourself make some sort of improvement, even if it's only a matter of seconds. Plus you can use it to draw penises on Google Maps if you get bored.

Alongside this, I've recently started using the 100 Pushups and 200 Situps apps for the iPhone. These are very simple apps, just recommending the number of reps you should do in each of five sets, but they're also effective in providing a bit of structure to your workouts. And structure is good; structure makes you feel like you're making progress, because you can tick things off (or gain points for them in EpicWin, which is another worthwhile motivational app for iPhones) and see at a glance how "well" you're doing.

While I doubt I'm ever going to be one of the skin-head tank-top wearing nutcases who frequent British gyms, it's good to know that I am making some progress, and I bet it's going to feel pretty damn special to complete that 10K in May.

You think it's awesome too, right? Sure you do. So you want to fling a few quid my way and sponsor me, don't you? Of course you do. And very gratefully received it is too.

#oneaday, Day 291: Final Lap

As the year starts to draw to a close—seriously, how the fuck did it get to be November already?—lots of "projects" or long-term goals are starting to eventually come together and come to fruition. Unfortunately, none of said long-term goals will result in financial gain for myself (unless you want to sponsor any of them, which you're very welcome to do) but they will result in a sense of long-term satisfaction.

This blog thing, for example. It's become part of my daily routine now. I love writing something every day. And it's interesting to look back at how the year (a pretty shitty one, by all accounts) has gone, how it's changed and, more to the point, how it's changed me. I'm a different person to the one I was five months ago. I'm a different person again to the one I was eleven months ago. I'd like to think that these changes are mostly for the better, and there are a few people out there who can probably back me up on this one. That's not a request for ego-massaging comments, incidentally, though those are, as ever, welcome.

And then there's the running thing, too. Tonight I completed Week 6 of the 9-week Couch To 5K programme. Tonight's run was 25 minutes of non-stop running, bookended by 5-minute walks for warm-up and cool-down purposes. And it was… I hesitate to say "easy", but certainly well within my abilities. I feel like my speed is increasing, too, though my average speed readout from RunKeeper (awesome app, by the way, and free for iOS and Android) seems fairly constant at just under 4mph. Not very fast, I know, but considering that nearly seven weeks ago I was struggling to run for a minute at a time, I think it's pretty clear that I've made awesome progress. And I feel good about that and have absolutely no problem publicly displaying a bit of pride about it. So there.

I have blown the right headphone earbud on my iPhone though. Guess the thumping bass and drums of the Split/Second soundtrack finally proved too much for them. That or Apple make shitty headphones. Given that exactly the same also happened to the right earbud of the headphones on my old 20GB iPod, I'm inclined to think it's the latter. Fuck you, Apple, and your shitty headphones. But not too much. I like the iPhone just fine, thanks.

So here are the "deadlines", for want of a better word: By the 25th of November, I should be running for 30 minutes at a time comfortably, and presumably able to run the titular 5K in that time. And by the 19th of January 2011, I'll have completed a year of continuous non-stop blogging. Will I have a decent job by then? Given that I have an exciting and mysterious job interview next Thursday, I might.

Will I be in a position to say "yes, this is where I want my life to be" by then? Possibly not. But things are definitely on that upwards slope. Time passes. Things happen. And when you look back, it's difficult to imagine being where you are now, then. If that makes sense.

I know what I mean, even if you don't.